Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 14, 2006

2006-04-14 04:00:00 PDT Sacramento -- An hour and a half into deliberations, a jury weighing the fate of a 23-year-old Lodi man accused of training to commit terrorist acts in the United States asked Thursday for a second view of the key evidence -- a five-hour videotaped confession that the defendant gave to FBI agents in June.

The request, in a note to U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr., underscored the critical nature of Hamid Hayat's admissions, which prosecutors described as plain proof of guilt and defense attorneys characterized as the rank fruit of manipulation.

The jury of six men and six women at first asked to watch the tape in a deliberation room. Attorneys later agreed to air the tape in full in court Monday.

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Hayat is accused of supporting terrorism by attending a Pakistani training camp in late 2003 and with initially lying about it to federal agents. Defense attorneys say he never went to a camp but lied in his confession in a misguided attempt to be helpful.

The jury's request came as a separate panel heard closing arguments in the trial of Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, a 48-year-old ice cream truck driver charged with initially lying to the FBI about his son's alleged training.

Lawyers had ranged wide in arguing the younger Hayat's case, disagreeing not only on his confession but on whether he had a "jihadi mind-set," and on whether he had incriminated himself in talks with an informant who became his best friend before secretly recording him. In addition to the taped confession, jurors asked Thursday for individual transcripts of Hamid Hayat's exchanges with the informant.

The elder Hayat's case, though, rests almost exclusively on his own videotaped interrogation, which spanned 10 hours on June 4 and 5 at the FBI's office in Sacramento. He told agents that in September 2004 he had, out of curiosity, visited a training camp that his son had attended earlier.

Prosecutor David Deitch asked jurors Thursday, "Why would he lie? Why would he dime out his son (falsely)?" Deitch said the confession carried inherent legitimacy, because no reasonable person would falsely confess to terror ties in a "post-Sept. 11 world."

Umer Hayat's attorney, Johnny Griffin, said his client had been psychologically bullied by agents until he was willing to say whatever they suggested.

Griffin pointed out instances in which Hayat seemed to parrot agents. At one point, Hayat said, "OK, you go ahead and tell me what you say."

Deitch countered that Hayat had also disagreed with agents on many occasions, offered original details and even motioned with his arms while describing how he saw men firing guns.

What jurors did not hear, because of rules regarding defendants' right to confront witnesses, is that FBI agents showed clips of his son's alleged confession to Umer Hayat before the father began to make admissions.

The father's jurors also were not shown the son's confession. The younger man described a camp in a field with between 35 and 200 trainees who were primarily Pakistani. His father recalled a basement camp in a different province where more than 1,000 masked men, including Americans, fired machine guns, swung swords and learned to pole-vault across rivers.

The witness rules protect suspects from being harmed by the words of co-defendants who, because they are on trial, cannot be confronted on the stand. In this case, both defendants have exercised their Fifth Amendment right not to testify.

Addressing the two juries, prosecutors used different strategies in explaining the two confessions.

On Wednesday, they conceded that Hamid Hayat had "flat-out lied" during parts of his confession, which featured many conflicts. They said the lies were attempts to minimize his crimes but didn't change the core truth of the admission. Prosecutors made no such acknowledgement regarding Umer Hayat's confession.

Prosecutor Robert Tice-Raskin attempted to corroborate the elder Hayat's confession with a tape-recorded conversation between him and the informant, 32-year-old Naseem Khan. Khan told Hayat that his son had spoken of plans to get "training" but had not followed through.